Public records compliance was within the law

Regarding your recent article (Gazette, June 11) on public records compliance, my recollection differs from that of the auditor's account of what happened when she requested incident reports from a Chillicothe Police Department employee.

First, I want to assure the citizens of Chillicothe and Ross County that incident reports taken by the police department that are under investigation by our detectives or officers are not automatically handed out to some random person, without the permission of the investigator. Nor are reports given out that may cause further harm to a victim. Second, I do not ask the name of a person at the window requesting a report, unless their name appears on the report and asking would help locate it.

Most people who call, email or appear at the window early Monday morning need a report because they were in an accident, had something stolen or need to file for a protection order. When a young woman came asking for all the reports from the last shift, which only ended an hour earlier, it was puzzling. I explained that all the reports might not be available if they hadn't been approved by a supervisor. Thinking she might be from the media or an accident law firm, I told her if she was going to need reports on a regular basis she could be put on a list to receive reports automatically by email and asked her who she was with. When she refused to tell me, I finally understood what she was doing.

There are a lot of calls made during a shift. Not all result in a report. After bringing up a list of all the last shift calls on the computer screen, you must look at each one individually to determine whether there is a report and then go to another screen to print it. It can be time consuming, especially if you receive a phone call during the same time period. It may have taken me a total of 18 minutes to provide Ms. Anonymous with four reports, but I did so to the best of my ability. I did not ask her if she was just nosy. I did, however, after realizing she was just doing her job, jokingly remark, "I thought maybe you were just being nosy." Some people have no sense of humor!